Not Quite Sane
by XXOceanBlueXX
Summary: I'm not quite sane. It's an ugly thing to say, but there it is. Of course, I've never met a fully stable ninja in my entire life. One-shot.


**I do not own Naruto. This is just a small little thing about Anko that I started thinking about. I own the writing. If you stand on your head and squint really hard you MIGHT see some KakashiXAnko.**

**OooOooO**

I'm not quite sane. It's an ugly thing to say, but there you have it. I don't know why this comes as a shock to people. Could a person really be a ninja who was? I really must ask the touchy question, a sore spot for most. After all, nobody wants to believe that the defenders of the village aren't really stable. And who can blame them? But it's not a job for the weak, not a job for the feeble and not a job for the lost.

Most importantly, not a job for those who can't risk the mental anguish that comes with it. It's a cruel burden, but one each ninja must bare. Because for every ninja that lives to come home, two more have been lost. That's the way it is, that's the way it always has been and that's how it's going to stay. A job like this requires nerves of steel, a desire to win, and emotions that must be held when called. A cool countenance that cannot be broken.

There are several types of people in this life. The people at the very top, who look down long noses and make decisions. Then the people at the bottom who run in mass confusion with no real knowledge of their world. Lastly there are the ninja's. We are the ones who have slipped through the cracks, and live in a world that's half sane half stable.

Take Kakashi for instance. A funny man, he is, with his lackadaisical eyes and his offhand personality. But he fell in the cracks at sometime. Maybe not immediately, maybe not at first, but it happens.

I'm a liar. I tell lies, but what you just heard was true. Or was I lying again? Perhaps I'm saying things in riddles and you have no idea what I'm getting at. Do you want to head down my path full of twists and turns? My eyes look through kaleidoscopes and you can do nothing about it.

I never considered how different I was from other children. The signs were all there, from adults and my peers but I never took heed. I was such a distracted child, that perhaps it wasn't a problem for me. But now looking back I see it everywhere.

_"Mommy, that girl doesn't have pupils." The boy looked at Anko with some sort of dread. She grinned at him for no reason, and it only made him press to his mother more. The playground rang with the sound of other children playing, but Anko was alone. _

_"Shush. She looks very nice." The mother scolded her son. He continued to stare at Anko with disbelief. She stuck her tongue out at him and ran to the swings._

_Another time, at school. When she first met the teacher, who looked at her with a funny gaze and said "Uncanny little thing, aren't you?"_

I'm a snake. I wasn't always, but I am now. The snake part of me, the part I can't always control came with a place on my neck. Now it's like a burning mark that angrily engulfs when awoken. Like a snake it strikes, bringing memories of a man with scary purple slitted eyes and fangs. He came up and bit me on the neck, and I think that was the part when I fell through the cracks.

Everybody wave to Anko as she goes down.

See what I mean? We're just not sane, all of us. Every one of those ninja's you pass on the street, all smiles and joy and not a care in the world, are all lying to you. It's a fun masquerade but eventually the masks have to fall. The porcelain ones will break and shatter and any others will simply burn.

Or am I lying? Perhaps I'm the only one whose insane, and everyone else is fine. And I'm simply telling you this, to escape my own horror of not being able to hack it, of not having those nerves of steel, of not having that desire to win. People like that, who leave their emotions behind, usually also leave their blood splattered over everything.

_"Tough guys like you usually leave their blood all over this forest."_

Oh, I'm sorry, didn't mean to disturb you all. Can't speak ugly, black words that might break your ideas of how a ninja should be. Such nasty pictures I must be painting, of the heroic life of a ninja. There's no room for blood, no room for dying words or fading eyes.

Liar, liar, liar.

Want to know a secret? Now isn't that funny? Whenever we hear those words we always think that we do want to hear the secret. We start to crave the little surreptitious thing, with greedy eyes. But then the secret, once known, becomes the hated burden that we never should have touched in the first place. It's all just a riddle.

Still want to know a secret?

I thought not.

_"You have bloodlust?" It was Kakashi, the funny man, speaking to her. She grinned at him and bit into a dumpling, letting the sweet taste rest on her tongue a moment before she finally swallowed. Kakashi waited on her answer patiently._

_"Who told you that?"_

_"That's no answer to give a friend." He responded in a playful manner. She raised her eyebrows at him._

_"Who said you were my friend?"_

_"I'm the closest thing you have to one."_

_True, she conceded. Friends in the ninja world were practically invisible. Except for the more recent generation who seemed to be more open with their feelings. It was all very different with that generation. They seemed to have some camaraderie that she had never reached._

_"A certain student of mine mentioned his blood being licked." Kakashi added. Anko finally made the connection and her mouth pulled back into a smile so big that her pointed snake like teeth could be seen._

_"Well, of course I have bloodlust. Orochimaru was my teacher."_

I don't need friends. Friends just add to the marred state that I could end up in. But I ended up with friends anyway. They creep up on you, like a shadow and suddenly you find yourself needing the support they bring you. Though I must admit, having me for a friend might be something like having a pet disease.

I get mad at my friends though. Can't understand why they do some things, like Kakashi trying to save his student. It's a useless quest, one he's not going to win. He's just going to kill himself out there, and all he can do is eye smile at me and say stupid stuff about the Third Hokage and Orochimaru.

Maybe I missed something along the way. My bond with my teacher was broken. I think it left some kind of cold thing that rattles in my chest, and leaves me with nothing but cracks that I've slipped through.

_In the dream Anko was a snake. She desperately looked for someone who would change her into her human form, because a curse had been set on her by an evil man with an evil smile. She decided that if she saw the evil witch man again, she would bite him with all her strength, and enter into his blood all venom she carried._

There's lot's of things I don't remember. Maybe it's better that way and maybe it isn't. I guess sometimes we have to accept thing (like being insane) and we've got to live with what we have.

But then again, I'm a liar and who knows when I'm telling the truth.

**OooOooO**

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